> > Just before burning your CD you can put a .txt file with the date, latest news> > headlines, and current weather in your location if you so wish.> > > > You can also label the CD or sharpie the date on it. > > or you know.. we could just have the build date in there and avoid such life hacks.> > I have to say B2K24, I often find you far too defensive of mamedev as a whole, no> matter how badly done something is (and we do a lot of stuff badly) you sing the> praises of it. I don't mean this in an offensive way, but I did have a conversation> with Moogly the other day about how we need to look at how things work in terms of> ordinary users, and how devs + power users can end up making us think we're doing the> right thing when we're not.> > Understanding what less techy users expect / need is very important to improving the> project. A date might seem 'meaningless' to high-end users, but it's something people> can connect with when they see it, that's why it ended up being used. A git hash and> code OTOH might seem really useful to us, but it's absolute gibberish to a normal> user. Having both satisfies both audiences.> > It's not always what we want to see / hear, but as long as it's *non-destructive* it> doesn't hurt to listen. The Widescreen debate amused me in the same way. As much as> it annoys me seeing stretched to Widescreen videos on YouTube, EVERY SINGLE PERSON I> know in real life wants the games to look that way, a significant number of them even> want VERTICAL games stretched to fill a 16:9 screen, it looks like shit, but your> every day person seems to expect that 'I paid for the screen, I'm making use of every> pixel for my game' etc. (and yes, they do the same with movies)> > The MAMEUI issue is the same, I don't know anybody who wants the command-line build,> even coupled with QT. We keep trying to push it, to try to encourage people to move> past MAMEUI, but most of them would never update MAME again without it (it took long> enough for people I know to realise that MAME hadn't died when MAME32 stopped being> updated, and that it was now actually called MAMEUI)> > We're not, for the most part, dealing with ultra-intelligent people here, if anything> a lot of our userbase seems to be of significantly below average intelligence (but> often with good practical skills instead)> > Something like a date is also a good reminder to ordinary people, they can see a date> and think 'is that REALLY the last time I updated?' and it might prompt them to do> so. There's nothing with a version number or git hash that can prompt them in that> way. Yeah, some people will hold on to old versions on purpose anyway, but we now> risk losing those who, come this time next year, would see 'May 2016' and think "I> wonder what's happened in a year, maybe it's about time I updated"> > I've always said the project needs to have a human side, not just a robotic side,> that's what I'm trying to show here, the robotic approach feels really quite autistic> and we need to be aware of that.

In my opinion putting the build date is the hack. File formats have never needed to keep their ctime in the file itself. That's always been the job of the operating system. Likewise, it's the job of the system administrator to do backups correctly. There is nothing 'autistic' about removing pointless and potentially misleading information from a file. Please, provide use cases for this incredibly important build date. I'm curious as to what sort of amazing things one can accomplish with it.